Of all the commitments you have to make as a studio owner — lease, build-out, software, payment processor — hiring and training staff is the largest. Sure it’s hard to extract yourself from an unfavorable lease agreement, but probably not as hard as hiring someone, training them, then figuring out they’re not going to work out. There’s a reason so many businesses describe themselves as family — sometimes the ties between members are inconveniently strong.
It’s no wonder so many people dread and procrastinate hiring staff. But, as Mago explains, there are some good mathematical reasons that finding good help is difficult. No matter how skilled an interviewer you are, you’re still subject to this chart:
As you can see, there’s only a one in four chance you’ll hire the right person, regardless of any good or bad methods you use to hire them.
But of course we can’t run everything ourselves forever. At some point we have to commit to an employee, and it can be a frightening, intimidating, difficult process. Mago admits he used to be bad enough at hiring that his very first employee ghosted him after the first day. However, we’ve certainly learned some things since then.
The benefits of a good, reliable team can’t be overstated. Hiring and training staff well means first finding good candidates who have something to offer your existing team (they’re not just replicas of staff you already have), and then giving them the tools they need to hit it out of the park. A good team will not only take weight off of the owner’s shoulders, but they will also bring in new ideas. Diversity of thought breeds resiliency because now your business has multiple resources it can tap to solve problems. If you are your only staff member, you gotta fix everything yourself.
A subtler, less visible benefit of a strong team is that they free you up to do your job. We’ll continue saying it until you beg us to stop, but an owner’s job is to deliver on their higher-level messaging. If the owner is tied up with every little nook and cranny of the studio, there’s no time or brain-space left over to deliver on the messaging, much less even remember what the heck it was in the first place. If you’ve decided your studio’s mission is to help teens develop leadership traits but the phone keeps ringing and two instructors didn’t show to teach their classes and there’s no paper towels in the bathrooms…well, if any teens do develop some good traits, it will be mostly by accident. A good team is invaluable.
Hit one of the links below to listen.